"Oh, my poor, bereaved girl, how can I tell you?" exclaims the frail invalid, the dew of womanly sympathy starting into her eyes. And Reine, with a horrible weight pressing on her heart, gasps faintly: "My husband----" "His name appears in the list of the four who leaped into the water," Mrs. Odell replies in an awe-struck voice. One cry, whose terrible despair pierces to the blue heavens, then blank silence. Reine has fallen forward, face downward, on the floor. For a brief space, time, love, sorrow, all the things of life, are blotted from her mind in a merciful semi-death. * * * * * The days go by--"time does not stop for tears"--and one day there comes out of the room where Reine, the girl, was carried in senseless, a beautiful, sad-eyed woman in sables. Sorrow has touched her with its transfiguring finger. The beautiful dark eyes droop always beneath the black-fringed lashes, the lips forget to smile, the white cheeks have lost their dimples and roses. For the passionate, loving heart, life is over and done--yet she lives on. "Death does not always bring its balm To every aching ill-- Life may outlast its dearest charm, And heart-break does not kill." After a time there comes to the crushed heart a thought crowded out at first by the intensity of woe--the remembrance of Maud. Maud, whose hopes, like her own, have hung trembling on the life of Vane Charteris. "I must go home," she says, sadly, to her friend. "Maud will need me. God only knows what has happened to her in these long months." And Mrs. Odell, who has daily grown weaker and frailer, looking up from the couch where she rests almost all day now, cries out, sorrowfully: "Oh, Reine, you will not let this Maud come between us? She cannot love you as well as I do." The girl answers her a little sadly. "I do not think she loves me at all." "Then, why go to her?" Mrs. Odell exclaims. "Because it seems my duty," Reine answers calmly. "Write to her," suggests the invalid eagerly. "There is no surety in the mail. It is safer to go," Reine objects. But that evening, faithful Dr. Franks, who has come across the ocean to watch over the invalid's health, requests a private interview with Mrs. Charteris. "I hear that you wish to return to America?" he says, fixing his kind, smiling gray eyes on her quiet face, with its grave, sweet lips and drooping eyes. "Yes," she answers. "Is it imperative?" asks Dr. Franks. "I think so," Reine replies, with some little wonder at his curiosity. "You are the best judge," he answers, gravely. "Were it otherwise I would beg you not to go." "Why?" Reine asks, surprised. "For that poor lady's sake in yonder. Do you know that your going will shorten her days upon earth?" "Dr. Franks, how can you speak so? You know I would not harm one hair of her dear, kind head," Reine says, with subdued indignation.